Customer Experience Management

Hydro Ottawa

“As a public-facing company offering a very important service in a heavily-regulated industry, we have high standards of accountability. We need to be able to deploy our crews to the right place quickly, and we have to be communicating instantly via multiple channels to our customers during a blackout.

“We always thought that we were a customer-focused business—but we knew we could do better. We have 700 employees serving over 330,000 customers and responding to over 300,000 enquiries annually. It’s not just about whether we can answer the telephone quickly and be pleasant. We needed to ask ourselves: What does our company need to look at as a whole in order to offer a true customer experience?

“That’s why we turned to Janet Leblanc + Associates.

“Janet’s approach was collaborative from the start. She guided a strategic discussion with senior members of a cross-functional team. She helped us engage many parts of our organization: operational people, our lines people, our communications people, our IT experts, and obviously our customer service staff. For this to work, we all needed to be on board.

“One of the reasons Janet’s approach worked for us was because she immersed herself in our business. She stepped through our processes as a customer. She studied documentation and training materials, and became familiar with our terminology, technology and processes.

“Janet and her team helped shape our customer experience strategy and goals, helped define the ideal customer experience, reviewed our conditions of service, guided us through the journey mapping process, and conducted a ‘Voice of the Customer assessment’.

“Janet helped us develop strategies that are totally in line with who we are at our core. She expertly balanced the needs of our customers and the needs of our business throughout.”

Hydro Ottawa Holding Inc. (Hydro Ottawa) is a regulated electricity distribution company operating in the City of Ottawa and the Village of Casselman. Founded in 1916, Ottawa Hydro (now Hydro Ottawa) has grown to become the largest local distribution company in eastern Ontario and the third-largest municipally-owned LDC in the province. Its 700 employees serve 330,300 total customers representing 302,000 residential, 24,770 small commercial and 3,300 large commercial users over a 1,116 square kilometre service area. Its recent projects include a large-scale solar rooftop initiative intended to reduce green houses gasses by approximately 41,000 metric tonnes over a 20-year term.